CHRIS POWELL: A glimpse of the truth is costly for cartoonist

Published 12:00 am, Tuesday, February 21, 2012

While he was suspended for a week as the Hartford Courant's political cartoonist, maybe Connecticut can thank Bob Englehart for providing unprecedented acknowledgment from the political left that the main problem with the state's worst-performing schools is not the teachers or the facilities but the students themselves.

Englehart was suspended for comments he posted in his corner on the Courant's Internet site about Connecticut's notorious "achievement gap" between city and suburban schools. He wrote: "Inner-city poor and minority-filled schools aren't going to change until we can somehow change the pervasive core of the problem: dysfunctional inner-city poor minority families. ... For the most part, losers raise losers. Somehow we've got to get to these families and teach them how to respect education. Till then, nothing will change."

It's not clear exactly what about these comments got Englehart suspended, nor why he apologized. No one explained.

Was it because of potential inferences of racism? Yes, minority groups are not the only ones with "dysfunctional" families -- that is, children born without fathers in the home. And yet discussion of the "achievement gap" has focused on minority children in cities, and a report published last month by the Connecticut Health Investigative Team, to which the Courant itself referred favorably, noted the disproportionate number of teen-age births among Hispanics and cited a federal program addressing teen-age pregnancy particularly among Hispanic and black girls. The report cited "cultural" issues.

So was Englehart's reference to "losers" really so hateful or intemperate? Or was it just a matter of frustration about the self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and a bit misled as to its cause?

New Haven Mayor John DeStefano pounced on the cartoonist but only to demagogue for the home audience. "The majority of New Haven public school students are minorities, and the majority are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches, but none of our students are losers," the mayor said. It was as if New Haven isn't rivaling Hartford and Bridgeport to become the murder, recidivism, and welfare capital of the state, and as if Englehart hadn't gotten far closer to the country's foremost problem than DeStefano ever has.

Close but no cigar. For while people often aren't too smart and while public policy increasingly makes them dumber, they're not always stupid. Childbearing outside marriage -- the primary cause of child neglect and abuse, mental and physical illness, crime, and their crushing costs in schools, hospitals, courts, prisons, and social work -- happens mainly because government makes it economically viable. Having relied mainly on sexual repression and superstition, the old religious stigma against it failed, leaving no one in authority to make actual argument, powerful as it is.

So instead of telling its perpetrators that childbearing outside marriage is the most destructive undertaking short of murder, government now rushes to coddle it, to provide all sorts of subsidies in the name of protecting the innocent child -- basic welfare stipends, free medical insurance better than what most responsible working people can afford, food and housing subsidies, day care, training programs, and other social services.

Of course these don't make for luxury but they are enough to sustain life, and amid the low expectations and demoralization of the self-perpetuating cycle of poverty, such a life can look pretty good.

The political right's response to the collapse of the family, the pillar of civilization, has been mainly to disparage homosexuals. This fails for irrelevance.

The political left's response -- at least prior to Englehart -- has been ever more remediation and abortion, particularly unquestioned abortion for minors even though these pregnancies result from statutory rape. This fails because the more remediation is done, the more the pathology is legitimized and the more it delivers to be remediated, and because most pregnancies among teens and unmarried young women are deliberate, the pathetic result of the search of the fatherless for someone -- a boyfriend or a baby -- to love them.

With about 40 percent of all children now being born fatherless, Connecticut and the country need public policy demanding two devoted parents for every child and stripping away the subsidies for new childbearing outside marriage. Until the word of this changed policy gets around, that means orphanages and group homes. While at first it might seem harsh, such a policy would be gentle compared to the alternative, national suicide, and we're halfway there already.